My Mission and My Why
I do not think that most of us have just one why. At least in my own life I have “why’s” that drive me in my marriage and family life, in my artistic life, in my professional work life and so on. If I were to condense everything down to a singular why it would be something like this;
Each of us is an unrepeated singular expression of the love of the divine creator.
We are beautiful, powerful, fragile and imbued with the ability to create.
Each day is a gift, a tomorrow was never promised so make the most of today.
Love as much as you can and just shine.
Is that a why? It’s the best I can do for an overarching why in my own life.
My mission is a bit different, I can specify that more to my life as an artist.
“It's always a mystery
Not what it seems to be
It's always a mystery
Just like you and me
Always a mystery “
Ronnie James Dio
There is a beauty and a deep attraction I have to the mysterious, the esoteric, and the shadowy world around me. I am in love with the questions that seem beyond answers. The muse is more than a thought or an idea, she is an entity that beckons from the mist to step inside another world filled with wonder. It’s been like that for me as long as I can remember. If it is super or para normal then it has my attention. If it smells of old dusty leather bound journals and mystery it has my attention. If it is an overgrown path with ruins at the end it’s my destination. There is a greater world around us than the one we see. Our lives have greater meaning and that meaning is found in the crashing together of our conscious and unconscious selves where we see a new landscape unfold before us. One that transcends space and time. I see the artists and the storytellers as the ones who guide the ship of humanity through the millennia and past the most distant stars and into the deepest and furthest depths of the collective consciousness.
Is that a mission? Well probably not, it’s probably more of an introspective observation of what I feel I express in my life and work. But it’s as good as its going to get
Progress over perfection, I can live with that.
My Story
By day I am privileged to be a design director of an amazing design team at a financial institution. By night I am an artist creating the work you see on this site.
I am also a father of 6 incredible (no longer little) human beings.
Need more than that???
I am a native Texan, those are rare these days as I understand it. I grew up on a steady diet of art, heavy metal and punk rock in Houston Texas. After graduating from high school I enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent a lot of time chasing missiles and drones while dodging the occasional wildlife. Chased a few UAPs as well. After my enlistment was up I headed out to college. I graduated from Texas A&M - Commerce with a fine art painting degree. While in college I started my own little web design business and had a pretty good run of it, sold that, went to work for Lockheed Martin and spent a decade and a half working on “stuff & things”. I married my college sweetheart Lili my senior year of college and (as of this posting) it’s been 26 years of awesome marriage. We have six amazing children (well, young adults now) to keep our lives very interesting.
I still love to draw, paint, take photos, and make stuff. That is what this site is mostly about.
We live in a creative house of artists, musicians, engineers and craftspeople.
We are storytellers.
We are gamers.
We can be found on the trail or in the dark corners of a good bookstore.
Our tiny army does many things, I hope to post some of them here.